Asian American, Native Hawaiian & Pacific Islander Heritage Month 2024

This Liberal Arts Engagement Hub residency seeks to expand the educational capacity of the Hmong Cultural Center Museum and amplify Hmong voices on campus and in the local community.

Read “Empowering Education”

Naomi Ko (BA ‘11, art history, English), a recipient of CLA’s 2023 Emerging Alumni Award, is a filmmaker, comedian, and writer. She serves as a cultural producer empowering Asian Minnesotan artistic voices.

Read "From the Top—and Action!"

As an anthropology student and the daughter of a Korean American immigrant, Samantha Schwartz wants to write an archaeological narrative that is authentic to the Korean American community.

Read “Unearthing Voices”

Born in Vietnam, MFA candidate Mai Tran creates intricate woodcut prints that explore the connections between American and Vietnamese cultures. "My woodcut prints hold true to traditional printmaking practices but deliver new narratives, linking one culture to another," the artist explains.

Read “Printmaker Turned Filmmaker”

Tenzin Namdul (BA ‘11, anthropology), a recipient of CLA’s 2023 Emerging Alumni Award, has studied Tibetan medicine and culture for years. He is an assistant professor and the director of Tibetan Healing Initiative at UMN’s Bakken Center for Spirituality & Healing.

Read “Bringing Together Modern & Tibetan Medicine”
 

Associate Professor Rachmi Diyah Larasati founded a center of cultural education for young children in Indonesia, where she teaches every summer. She invites the children to think critically about the world around them and connect this understanding to dance, engaging with it by creating their own meaningful choreographies and interpretations.

Read “Reimagined Futures”

American Studies PhD candidate Demiliza Saramosing spent last summer conducting fieldwork that will illuminate social injustices and explore the everyday lives and cultures of young adults in occupied Hawaiʻi. The project explores how young adults are impacted by myriad historical and contemporary social, economic, and political circumstances.

Read “Youth Culture, Colonial Legacies, Abolition & Decolonial Justice in Kalihi, Hawaiʻi"

American Studies PhD candidate Richard Lim studies the landscape of inter-racial political activism in Los Angeles, examining coalition-building in social justice organizing and seeking to answer this question: How can politics based on issues of immigration become the conditions of possibility and transformation of entire communities?

Read “Reconsidering the Conditions for Liberation”

American studies PhD candidate Jonny Quenga Borja explores the Complexities of Queer CHamoru Culture. “Art is a very expressive tool, and it’s perfect for finding the convergences and divergences, the trials and tribulations, the joys and the sorrows of the experience of being a queer CHamoru,” they say.

Read "History for Today”

Drawn to the U for its Philippine Student Association and the Marching Band, Angel Enhaynes (BS ‘24, Sociology of Law, Criminology & Justice) plans to pursue a career in the criminal justice system.

Read “Q&A with Angel Enhaynes”